Summer is a great time for reading and writing. Even though my institution has summer session, they don’t seem to make use of research or the library. For one of my writing projects, I’ve been rereading bell hooks’s Teaching to Transgress. She makes great use of Paulo Freire’s Pedagogy of the Oppressed and expands it into feminist pedagogy. In the library classroom, I often feel forced to choose between feminist praxis and the.. Read More

One of the highlights of my ACRL experience was getting to listen to Safiya Umoja Noble speak about how search engines represent women, especially women of color. You can read more about her fascinating presentation in this American Libraries article. You can also find out more about her research and publications on her website. ~ Susan Gilman, Research Librarian, Lamont, Tozzer, and Widener Libraries, Harvard University

Posters from the ACRL-WGSS Membership meeting at the 2014 ALA Annual are now available online: http://libr.org/wgss/committees/research/postersession/index.html Thanks to all our poster session participants! We hope these excellent examples will inspire others to present next year.

One of the advantages afforded to us by social media is the ability to engage others in our profession, across distances and in real-time. Tomorrow, Tuesday, September 30, 2014, from 9-10 p.m. Eastern time, #critlib and Uncivil LIS will be discussing the impact of the Salaita case at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This is a great opportunity for members of library and information professions to engage with others on.. Read More

The 2014 National Women’s Studies Association Annual Conference will be held November 13-16, in Puerto Rico. Due to intense interest and a record number of applications to present, this will be the largest NWSA conference to date, with over 500 sessions! Below are two library-related panels that are being presented by faculty-librarian teams (including several WGSS-ers), plus the Librarians Task Force Business Meeting. Please consider coming to Puerto Rico. It’s.. Read More

As the weather gets colder it’s time to grab a cup of tea, a blanket, and a good book. Here are a few random selections to get you inspired. For more ideas Goodreads has a variety of lists and groups devoted to books relating to Women, Feminism, and LGBTQ individuals, such as the F-Word group and the LGBT bookshelf. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay Gone Girl by Gillian.. Read More

Mount Holyoke became the most recent women’s college to change its policy on the admission of transgender students. Read more in this Chronicle of Higher Ed article. One of Mount Holyoke’s students participating in the campaign, Open Gates, that supports the inclusion of trans women. Image courtesy of the Open Gates MHC Tumblr Martine Rothblatt, a trans woman, was just named the highest paid female executive in the country. This.. Read More

Even before the 2014-2015 academic year started, controversy has already been roiling within our higher ed circles. The heat, it seems, is just getting hotter. Specifically, the controversy I’m referring to involves the contentious un-hiring of Dr. Steven Salaita from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) American Indian Studies (AIS) Program’s roster of faculty members. There is much to learn and understand about the Salaita case, the high volume.. Read More

via TechCrunch: “No one should be denied understanding of their human rights just because they can’t afford a mobile data plan. Now women in Zambia won’t be, as Facebook and Internet.org’s new app gives them free Internet connection for accessing women’s rights resources like MAMA (Mobile Alliance For Maternal Action), WRAPP (Women’s Rights App), and Facts For Life by UNICEF… “’Women’s access to technology — and their ability to use.. Read More

In case you haven’t heard, the interwebs is alight with controversy, yet again. Well, more accurately, when is it not alight with controversy, right? There are myriad controversies that abound within the spaces of social media and the corners of the internet. Most relevant to us on this blog and ACRL-WGSS is Women Against Feminism (WAF) on Tumblr and Facebook, which has been catching fire recently. As soon as famous.. Read More